The ‘why’ of things

I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life.

Nineteen years after my first visit to the Soviet Union I had a desire to go back and take another look. Actually, nothing is more revealing than to compare a country with what it once was, looking both for the thread of continuity and for those things that have changed.

What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life

The camera is not what I would call an ideal tool for answering the ‘why’ of things. It is better suited to suggesting, to recalling: and, ideally, in its own intuitive way, it questions and answers simultaneously. I therefore used the camera ... as the recording instrument in my search for what André Breton calls ‘le hasard objectif’.